I remembered, this week, why I try not to volunteer for committees, or agree to be co-opted on to them: because they’re the most inefficient way of getting anything done I have ever come across.

After a long and stupidly fraught meeting, at which allegedly grown-up people bickered like toddlers, we had some problem-solving proposals; at which point, one of the delegates questioned whether we were actually going to vote on any of them.

I don’t think I was the only one who wanted to wring his neck . . .

Why are people so afraid to decide what to do about something? Is what’s stopping them not fear of failure but of criticism and blame?

If you accept that no-one honestly, deliberately makes a wrong decision, then it follows that there’s no point blaming them if it does turn out to be wrong.

They did the best they could at the time. And if they’re honest people, they’ll say so and apologise (another thing we seem to have forgotten how to do).

You can blame people for making mistakes because they didn’t check their facts, but that’s not the same as “asking everyone’s opinion” (a modern euphemism for “not agreeing anything until the opposition has got so bored with inaction they throw in the towel or until we go ahead with Plan A anyway”).

Meetings should make decisions; people on committees should vote. If we can’t put the life back into democracy, find me a benevolent despot to take charge.